As soon as I made my last post someone e-mailed me and asked me to let him know how many "hate mails" I receive based on my use of banding codes.  I thought he was crazy, but apparently that was not the case.  To set the record straight, I am not elitist, I don't even consider myself a great birder!  I am, however, very busy: work full time, try to bird full time (at over 540 for the year!), volunteer for several nonprofits, and I am entering my second trimester (I'm gravid ;-).  So, the use of codes for me is simple shorthand, and since I'm getting my banding subpermit next spring I really just wanted some practice with the codes.  I appreciate the folks that let me know I made two errors (BLUE should have been BLJA for Blue Jay and BTGW should have been BTNW for black-throated green warbler- that's a tough one, but one I'll probably remember from now on!).  When I type codes I usually refer to my BSBO banding code list, but I literally had
 someone standing behind me trying to get me to hurry up while I was typing that last list (another reason for my use of quicker codes).  

In the past I would just post my rarity sightings and not an entire list, because I thought this listserve was dedicated to rarity postings.  In recent months, however, I noted there's also an interest in First of Season (there I go again, I almost just typed FOS!) birds and other migration trends and avian response to weather fronts, etc.  I find these posts interesting, so I decided to start contributing my own observations.  In the future I will probably just stick to posting the rarities and not mention the other more common birds I observe.  Although if I have time I will enter my observations into e-bird first then post the lovely spell-checked taxonomically ordered list it produces.  But considering I still have about 50 big year lists in a folder waiting to be added to e-bird, you guys wouldn't get my posts until about 6 months later; not too timely for twichers!  

Overall, I am very sorry I caused so much of a broohaha on the listserve!!!  I will try to remember to not use the 4 letter codes (or any other acronyms) on this listserve in the future. (no such promise for my FB peeps- if I'm posting from the field using my i-phone it's much easier  typing codes ;-) 

Finally, I want to say thanks to everyone that posts on this list!  Several of my year birds were the result of chasing rarities that were reported here.  It's an invaluable source of information and I am glad I live in a state with an active birding community.

Cheers,
Heather Raymond (AKA HERA)   
  





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